Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Perspectives: Before Crowning CEO As Champion Of Consumers, Let’s Check Allergan’s Record

Read recent commentaries about drug-cost issues.

Stat:
Will One CEO's Pledge To Cap Drug Price Hikes Really Help?
How much credit should we give Brent Saunders for trying to put a lid on drug prices? The Allergan chief executive last week issued a manifesto in which he vowed to avoid “price gouging” as part of a “social contract” with the public. And he promised that his company, which is best known for selling Botox, will limit price hikes to single-digit percentages each year — although he acknowledged that there may be exceptions. (Ed Silverman, 9/13)

Bloomberg:
The Strange Case Of Off-Patent Drug Price Gougers
There’s a conflict at the heart of pharmaceutical pricing in the U.S.: On the one hand, it’s in the public’s interest for pharma companies to get a good return on the huge investments they often make in developing new drugs. On the other, it’s in the public’s interest to be able to afford those drugs. (Justin Fox, 9/9)

Forbes:
How Congress Can Make Drug Pricing More Rational
The public reproach over the price of Mylan’s lifesaving drug EpiPen is the latest imbroglio in a much broader debate over drug costs. At issue is the rising list price on drugs. But as Mylan argued, these high reported prices often bear little relation to the real price actually paid, after rebates and discounts, by most health plans. The question is how we can bring more prudence to this complex system, in which drug discounts don’t flow evenly to the patients who need access to these medicines. (Scott Gottlieb, 9/12)

Forbes:
Biotech CEOs: Don't Let EpiPen Threaten Innovation
Recently there have been numerous articles and editorials understandably scrutinizing the increases in pricing of EpiPen produced by Mylan, a generic drug company. The strong reaction to the behavior of Mylan and a few other companies is threatening to impede the ability of R&D-focused innovator companies to provide innovative, life-changing new therapies to patients. (Ron Cohen, Paul J. Hastings, Rachel K. King, Jeremy M. Levin, John M. Maraganore and Michael A. Narachi, 9/12)

Morning Consult:
The Real EpiPen Lesson
The bad press and outrage swirling around the pharmaceutical company Mylan has forced it to take an unusual new step. In response to criticism of the company’s $600 price tag for its EpiPen — an emergency response system for severe allergic reactions — Mylan is offering a generic version of its own product. The generic EpiPen will cost $300 dollars — half the current price of a two-pack of the product — and would compete directly with its name-brand counterpart. (Nathan Nascimento, 9/12)

Fortune:
Don’t Only Blame Mylan For $600 EpiPens
We should be anything but surprised at the sky-high prices we now see for prescription drugs. In the past several weeks, the public’s attention has focused on Mylan and its 400% EpiPen price increase since 2009. Yet EpiPens are not—by a long shot—the only drugs that have sparked recent outrage due to price hikes. Generic epinephrine costs, for example, have risen by more than 200%. And the price of Naloxone, a life-saving drug that can help reverse opioid overdoses, has risen 17-fold in the past two years. What is shocking, then, is not that an EpiPen 2-Pak now costs as much as $600, but rather that it took Mylan nearly a decade to raise its price this high. (Ezekiel Emanuel, 9/8)

The Philadelphia Inquirer/Philly.com:
We All Pay The High Cost Of EpiPens
Over the past month, the EpiPen controversy has triggered a national debate on what to do about high drug prices. The enormous public attention stems from a doubling of the price over a three-year period. Families with life-threatening allergies can now end up paying more than $600 for a prescription. Heather Bresch, CEO of the company (Mylan) that makes the EpiPen, blames insurance plans. She says it’s high deductibles that are the root of the problem. I disagree. High deductible health plans are not causing the price hikes – they are just making them visible to consumers and the public. (David Grande, 9/12)

Chicago Sun Times:
Get To Bottom Of Drug Company Overpricing
Outrage over a new $608 sticker price for a two-pack of life-saving EpiPens snowballed last week into an announcement that the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had opened a “preliminary inquiry” into the matter. Tough scrutiny of the decision by the pharmaceutical company Mylan to jack up EpiPens’ price by 550 percent since it bought rights to the product in 2007 is well-deserved. (9/11)

FiercePharma:
AbbVie’s Humira, Pfizer’s Lyrica Dominate A Year Of TV Ad Spend With Almost $500M Total
A year into tracking pharma TV ad spending with data provided by iSpot.tv, FiercePharmaMarketing is ready to declare a “winner.” No surprises here though: It’s AbbVie’s Humira. AbbVie has dropped more than $288 million on Humira TV ads for the year we followed from September through the end of August, according to data from realtime TV ad tracker iSpot. That includes spending across its three indications for arthritis, psoriasis and Crohn's disease/colitis, with arthritis spending the highest at $144 million, or half of the total. Crohn’s and colitis spending were next at $104 million, followed by Humira’s indication for psoriasis at $40.3 million. (Snyder Bulik, 9/12)

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